Facebook Is In Trouble For Yet Another Creepy Privacy Violation

Facebook is a company built on the philosophy of “It’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission.” That has never really come off well; at best it means the company is unrelentingly obnoxious. And it looks like Facebook’s latest app permissions request may have finally gone too far for users.

Namely, Facebook is demanding the permission, found on Android versions, to take pictures and record audio with its app. The feature people are freaking out about will listen in to what you’re doing and automatically tag it with, say, the song in the background or the TV show it’s overhearing. Here’s a video of it in action:

It would be nice to say that this is the strangest thing Facebook wants permission to do to your phone, but that would be a blatant lie. Basically, Facebook wants as much of your data as possible, and your choices boil down to either uninstalling the app from your phone, or accepting that Mark Zuckerberg is possibly listening to your awkward hookups.

Come to think of it, if enough of us leave our phone around the most obnoxious person we know, that might solve the problem quite handily. Anybody know what Gilbert Gottfried charges?

I don’t understand how, after all of this, people can’t just accept that if they’re going to use Facebook nothing is going to be private. My favorite are people complaining about the NSA in Facebook posts.

By: filthysnowman

06.05.2014 @ 8:40 AM

Could not agree more MakingFlowers. People need to realize that when they post things online, somewhere something is storing that information. From simple messages to credit card information, once you stick it, someone can pick it.

It’s because bookface USED TO be a “good” company that didn’t intrude on its users’ personal information, but just accepted what they offered willingly and knowingly. That all changed when they removed the college e-mail requirement and started linking every word you typed to another “sponsored” page.
In 2005, a user could say they liked “beer” by simply typing the word into a little box for the things you “like”, sort of like an online dating profile. After the change, “beer” had its own page, and all of your information was given to whoever owned the page for “beer”. The same thing was done for every movie, book, and TV show you could think of. Suddenly, your information was given to these groups, WITHOUT your permission, just because you’d typed the word in your old “likes” box. The users weren’t told this was going to happen, and we were never given the option to opt-out of it.

This is more how horrible Android’s permission system is. Grant everything on installation with updates able to increase permissions without user intervention. iOS’s permission system is annoying but that can’t happen since every feature it wants access to it requests on first use allowing you to decline.

If an Android app changes its app permissions from one version to the next, you are required to manually approve the update and the new permissions before it goes through. You’ll get a notification indicating that you have an app update waiting that requires your approval, at which point you will be shown what the new permission requests are. Which you are free to decline as you see fit.

If it wants a new permission from an existing group it will silently update. So an app that wants contact information for something can then expand that to include calendar access without you having to approve that.

I could care less about Facebook. I have not got a facebook account, nor will I…EVER! Anyone that has a facebook account deserves for their privacy to be intruded. IT IS A PUBLIC SITE! Your privacy is being intruded by strangers the minute you create a facebook page.

1. Use the mobile site in your phone’s browser. Works just as well in my humble opinion.
2. Install the XPosed framework and then the XPrivacy module and lock Facebook down (this is good for a bunch of other apps as well).
3. Just put up with Facebook being able to access everything on your phone.
4. Get off of Facebook.